The Emergence Collective was born through the easeful pleasure of collaborating on a project back when we both lived in San Francisco. We wanted to keep the magic alive and extend it to all of our work, so we created the EC brand. It began as an experiment in walking our collaborative talk in a field where most consultants work alone, and it has evolved into a values-driven home-base for all our client engagements. Being network nerds by nature, our collective spans far beyond just the two of us and we pull in support staff, network experts, designers and advisors to support client projects as well as the ongoing experiment that is 'the EC'.
Rebecca Petzel
is a network consultant bringing both passion and experience around unlocking the collaborative potential within social and environmental change communities. She's been called a facilitator, a design-thinker, an organizational development consultant, a strategist, an organizer, a collaboration ninja, and a web geek amongst other things. How'd she get into this work? In 2009 Rebecca completed a thesis on the potential of collaborative innovation networks in the age of Wikipedia to help unlock collective intelligence and fuel social and environmental progress. Her thesis marked the completion of a unique Swedish masters program teaching leadership through complexity alongside the scientific underpinnings of environmental and social sustainability. She was driven to academia by the challenges she encountered working on place-based, environmental initiatives, specifically the ineffectiveness of our group process skills up against the ever growing complexity of the problems at hand. Since this academic crash-course into the theory and practice of collaboration, she's worked with inspiring organizations and networks across the globe putting this research into action. Past clients include UCSF & the Health eHeart Alliance, Forward Together, the Funder's Committee for Civic Participation, Code for America, the Impact Hub global network of entrepreneurs, New Media Ventures, Levi Strauss & Co., amongst others. Through all this work she focuses on the critical importance of equity and communities designing solutions to their own challenges. She draws on theories from both technologists studying collective-intelligence, organizational development gurus studying the future of work, and social justice activists driving critical community-based organizing to help design participatory processes that are democratic in spirit, agile in practice, locally contextualized, and that work. She has an M.Sc. from Blekinge Techniska Hogskola, a leading sustainability engineering program in Sweden, a BA in economics and environmental studies from the great University of Wisconsin - Madison. After wide travels that took her from San Francisco to Montana to Australia and beyond, she has settled for the time being in Chicago. More on LinkedIn |
Brooking Gatewood
helps leaders and groups clarify and enact the change they want in themselves, in their workplace, and in our shared world. At heart, her work is about co-liberation from systems of ‘power over’ and moving toward systems of ‘power with’ that honor individual agency as well as collective interests and wisdom. In practice, her coaching and consulting focuses on transformation across levels - from individual and team mindsets and behaviors to large-scale policy and systems change. How'd she get into this work? Early in her career, Brooking worked in the environmental sustainability movement, with the Natural Capital Institute and as a communications and partnership manager with Global Footprint Network. These jobs exposed her to networks of hundreds of different organizations trying to have a positive impact in the world, and she got hooked on the crucial role of collaborative leadership in organizational, network, and movement effectiveness. She then dove into the theory and practice of systemic change, studying social movements and network theory, organizational psychology, group process facilitation, systems theory and developmental coaching. She’s also been fortunate to learn from some brilliant senior facilitators, coaches, and process designers at Adaptive Edge, Groupaya, and Ag Innovations. She has designed, managed, and facilitated countless group meetings, retreats, conferences, workshops, as well as longer-term coaching and conflict transformation, culture change, strategic planning and collective action processes. She has worked with leadership teams, organizations, cross-sector alliances and movement networks in the arenas of health care, natural resource management and environmental and social justice, education, and democracy. Client partners have included universities, collaborative movements and initiatives, foundations, state agencies, start-ups, SMEs and NGOs of all sizes. Brooking holds a MA in organizations and management theory from UC Irvine, and a BA in environmental studies from Dartmouth, and is part of a number of other collaborative practice communities such as UFacilitate, Beloved Economies, Scaling Intimacy, and Illuminate. She has additional training in somatic and developmental counseling and coaching, facilitation, mediation, and mindfulness. She recently returned to her hometown of St. Louis, and in her spare time enjoys crafting essays, poems, and performance art. More on LinkedIn |
With our expertise in virtual collaboration,
we work with partners, clients, networks distributed around the globe.
Contact us to learn more !
